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Passing the House of Representatives with a vote of 56-3, House Bill 4094, which seeks to remove the criminal liability from state law to allow banks and credit unions to bank with, and lend to, lawful marijuana businesses, is now headed to the Senate for adoption.

“This is an important first step in reducing risk and providing security for banks, credit unions, and the public” said Tobias Read, the sponsor of the bill in the House. “Without a clear timeline from the federal government, the state needs a solution, even if it’s temporary.”

Currently, a tangle of federal laws are preventing legal marijuana businesses from accessing banking services, which shoulders them with a significant cash burden. Besides holding harmless those financial institutions that do business with the legal cannabis industry, the bill also instructs the Department of Consumer and Business Services (DCBS), an agency already responsible for communicating with the new industry in Oregon, to look into the state’s options for the future.

“The need for baking reforms is nothing new to the cannabis industry,” said New Economy Consulting’s Sam Chapman. “However, now that a state agency has been tasked with the collection of cannabis tax revenue, the regulators, the state, and the industry are all in the same boat. This fact should send a clear message to Congress to accelerate their work on reforming banking laws at the federal level.”

GLENDALE, Colo. (AP) — Colorado's newest pot shop has some wondering whether strippers and weed are too closely aligned on a busy highway just east of downtown Denver.

The Smokin Gun Apothecary opened on a site formerly occupied by the Denver area's best known strip club, Shotgun Willie's. The strip club hasn't gone away - it's moved just across the parking lot, testing ethical and potentially legal issues about the state's growing legal recreational pot industry.

Beyond banning the sale of pot and alcohol in the same shop, Colorado has no regulation regarding marijuana and other adult businesses. Zoning rules require shops to be away from schools or anywhere children congregate.

Legal recreational marijuana sales started in January 2014. That same month Colorado State Patrol started keeping track of driving under the influence arrests involving marijuana to try to spot any trends. Compared to 2014, 2015 saw a slight decrease, which I’m sure isn’t welcomed news to marijuana opponents who predicted mayhem on the roadways once legal recreational marijuana sales began. Per the Durango Herald:

Beginning in January 2014, Colorado State Patrol began tracking marijuana-related citations in an effort to identify trends. The data showed a 1.3 percent decrease from 2014 to 2015 for DUI and DUID citations involving marijuana.

Out of 4,546 citations issued for DUI/DUID in 2015, there were 347 in which marijuana was the sole indicator, and 665 instances where marijuana was one of the indicators.

But a mere two years of data collection doesn’t point to a conclusion.

“From those numbers, we know very little. They were released to provide insight,” CSP Trooper Josh Lewis said. “We don’t know if we’re going to start seeing an increase or a decrease. When we get two, three, four more years of data, we’ll find those first two years could be very different. We don’t know what way it will be trending.”

Ready or not, legal marijuana could be coming to a state or city near you in the not-too-distant future.

Since 1996, we've witnessed an incredibly quick rate of expansion for marijuana at the state level. Beginning with California legalizing medical marijuana, 22 additional states, along with Washington, D.C., now allow for medical cannabis to be prescribed by physicians for specific ailments that vary by state.

This expansion has happened despite the federal government hardly budging on its stance toward marijuana. The Obama administration has lifted some of the hoops that researchers would need to jump through prior to commencing a clinical study into the benefits or risks of the drug, but as a whole, the marijuana plant is still just as illegal today as it was in 1996 at the federal level.

The prescription painkiller epidemic has become the latest focus of American lawmakers, but the additional spotlight on this issue in which misguided federal policy has caused to spiral out of control could eventually become the catalyst needed to pull the cannabis plant out of the trenches of total prohibition.

One of the first of many calls to action to be throttled upon federal health officials from Capitol Hill comes from Senator Elizabeth Warren. The federal lawmaker fired off a letter earlier this week to the lead brass at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention demanding the agency begin researching marijuana to determine whether it could be used to combat the opioid problem currently sweeping the United States.

Joycelyn Elders was never shy about speaking her mind as she consistently stirred public controversy while serving as surgeon general during her spirited – and short-lived – tenure with President Bill Clinton.

Now 82, Elders demurred just a bit when she was introduced Friday night at a reception at the International Cannabis Business Conference, a teeming marijuana politics and industry conference at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in San Francisco.

“Everybody in this room knows more about cannabis than I do,” Elders began. “Twenty years ago, no one would even say the word ‘marijuana.’”